On CNN, on MSNBC, even on CNBC, on Fox, occasionally
on NBC, CBS and ABC, too many things happen at once on my television
screen for me to know what, if anything, is important. We were living
with this information overload before the war in Iraq, but now it is
worse than ever. This, then, is about the television program the war
was in its first four weeks. It is about how show business now dominates
news,
especially on cable. It is not about how the networks report war from
the field.

Television for me has always been about the picture,
and what it conveys in combination with words. All pictures work best
when allowed to linger just long enough for their information and power
to make their mark. That is why the picture had, until recently, a unique
status.

In films, whether narrative or non-fiction, because
the movement or motion of the images is what that medium is all about,
you want the picture to breathe, that is, to have a beat or two before
it changes to the next image. In newspapers and magazines and on the
Internet, the picture can sit as long as you want while you watch it
breathe, thus
giving it a life in a context of your own choosing.

Something new happened to television news after 9/11.
Information overload became the name of the game. We entered the over-information
age. Television news gave up most its standards. Sharp editing died.
Broadcasters, though, could not have been more proud of their new offspring.
Information became lord of the screen. With that in mind, consider what
we now see and hear from watching too much television, something we
do especially in times of crisis.

We cannot concentrate on all the information sent our
way because of the visual clutter. Perhaps that is what the broadcasters
want. The less we concentrate the more they can assault our senses and
the more they might hold us before we click our way to the next channel.

First, there is the nerve-wracking crawl across the
bottom of the screen that lures your attention from the anchor, and
the correspondent. There is line above the crawl that gives you information
about the story you are watching. There is usually another line, the
third from the bottom, which identifies the network and the title of
its coverage. The
ever-present identifying “bug” in the lower left or right
of the screen is there in case someone steals the coverage, enabling
the lawyers to know where it came from if they have to sue. Sometimes
we are fortunate to have a fourth line of information that reinforces
or repeats everything said by the anchor and the interviewee. Often
misspellings abound because the writer or typist is working too fast
always to be
accurate. I doubt if a copy editor or producer reads the words before
they hit air. On CNN and MSNBC, there is the additional annoying, almost
subliminal crawl across the screen in the opposite direction from everything
else that tells you who or what show you are watching. Above the anchor’s
head, you will also see the word, “Live,” and somewhere
on top of the pictures, you watch you will see, “Earlier,”
and “Baghdad,”
or another location. Whew. What do I watch first? What has the most
importance? It is hard to know. I know people who turn off the sound
so they can in, peace, read the many crawls that fill the screen. This
becomes radio without hearing the words, the only way to get coherent,
though too little information.

On all the networks, the anchor has a place, perhaps
as small as a fifth of the screen, usually in the left-hand corner of
the screen. Most of what remains on the screen is a series of pictures
from the war, often not related to what anyone says. Worse, when footage
in from the field has an interview in close-up, we lose half the face
of the interviewee to the assorted junk moving across the screen interdicting
the chin, the
mouth and sometimes the nose of the subject. That person might as well
be a wood post for all the emotion we feel. How much information can
the eye and mind absorb? Do I watch and listen to the images first,
then listen to the voice through the writing? Should I care about the
bylines and the locator graphics that muddle the screen? I want to shout
help but I know no one will hear.

Cheerleading anchors dominate the small screen, especially
on cable. Their enthusiasm for their organization’s journalism
is overzealous, to say the least, and obviously ordered by their managers.
They deliver the hype as if handed down from heaven. Does it mean they
believe their babble? We may never know. The self-serving hard sell
about who is best, who presents the war best, the annoying graphics
and the demanding, over-the-top pulsating music try to make you a convert
to their network.
I understand the need for branding, but it is shameless and beyond sane.
Show business wins. The audience loses. Almost to an anchor, their set-up
or throw to the correspondent in the field is over the top. Stentorian
announcements prevail. Often I feel as though anchors and reporters
in fixed positions, not those embedded with the troops, shout over the
clamor of their own words. The other night when an anchor
reported that hundreds of Iraqi troops died in a battle, he added of
the action, “Amazingly good shooting.” He shook his head
in awe. It was shocking to hear. I wanted to thank him, glad that he
gave me his insight into the war.

I have no problem with the correspondents embedded
with the troops. Yes, sometimes they are too excited. At times they
have lost perspective, but that is understandable considering the narrow
focus they have being stuck with one unit. I know they are tired and
overworked. In the end, they deserve all the praise they can get. It
will take some time after the war to decide who benefited most from
embedding, the public or the
Pentagon. Until then, the public, through the dedication of the journalists
in the field, is the winner. Without their presence, we would not share
the work and hardships of the incredible men and women in our military.
After Baghdad fell, some embedded journalists departed their designated
units. In a few cases, they shifted to new units.

The Pentagon was unhappy, and probably still is because it means they
now lack complete control over every aspect of the reporting. Context,
though, is almost dead. It no longer matters how one picture and word
fits with another. Storytelling is the victim of immediacy. Sometimes
all the networks use raw, unedited footage and by doing that, they and
we have entered the world of information disconnection. Coherence is
the first casualty of this new reporting. Here the loop comes into play.
A loop is simple. It is a piece of video that runs however long you
want to make it, repeating the footage, say every thirty seconds. Often
you will see those pictures played repeatedly during an interview without
a dateline no matter the interview’s subject. This is not only
confusing, it is bad journalism.

Despite my negativity, the old networks, CBS, NBC,
and ABC sometimes showed their mettle when they had the opportunity
to engage in storytelling, pieces about the war that were usually clear
and understandable. It started to happen into the fourth week of the
war after the march through the desert ended. We witnessed this on magazine
shows and regularly scheduled broadcasts. True, there was more time
for
thought and clarity, but the cable channels, except when doing survey
or roundup stories, still resorted to telling you more than you wanted
to know without letup. Though the old networks often fell into the same
traps as the cable channels, their presentations were usually more lucid
and meaningful than those of their stepchildren in cable. In cable,
it is all news, all the time, with most of it live, unending and usually breathless. Immediacy beats clarity every time in the rush to generate
excitement.

I am looking forward to the next and newest advance
in war coverage. It entails two themes from sports broadcasting. One
is instant replay so we can watch the same event repeatedly in a variety
of speeds. More importantly, there will come the day when a firefight
or victory parade has a camera at every angle, much like on a football
field during the Super Bowl. That way, with slow motion and instant
replay, we will be
able to witness war in all its glory and never blink between needed
trips to the fridge.

The broadcasters in their arrogance are so sure they
are doing right by their audience they may never submit to change. However,
that does not mean we should stop badgering them in our effort to make
them see the light and to free all those pictures from the tyranny of
information overload. One day we might triumph, but do not hold your
breath.